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May 30, 2007

The Meaning of Life

Posted by Gort Slypesunder at 4:18 PM

May 26, 2007

Interview of the year, as AFL trounces Government

Rising Rodent of the year George Brandis	Rookie Twit of the year Christopher Pyne

Beyond the lies and corruption for which the Howard Government is well known, one aspect of their shameful reign often goes unmentioned: their utter incompetence.

Witness the pathetic invasion of AFL headquarters by Howard's stand-in rodent, George Brandis, and the very silly twit, Christopher Pyne (unbeknownst to the PM, a last minute stand in for the hysterical Peter Costello). Like two ring-ins for absent Mafia stand-over men in a B-grade comedy movie, they marched up to the big men of Aussie Rules with their little list of demands (on A4 paper without Government letterhead).

The reasons, as Greg Baum notes, are at least twofold: 1) AFL boss Andrew Demetriou pissed off the Government two years ago by questioning "whether Australia was now as tolerant and generous as the country his parents migrated to 50 years ago." And 2):

Two years ago, the AFL and Cricket Australia were resisting government pressure to sign up to the World Anti-Doping Authority (WADA) code, believing their own codes to be more stringent.

Angered, the Government threatened to withhold funding. Typically, this was funding used in development programs. The Government was prepared to make hostages of innocents to keep face on the world stage.

The AFL backed down, signing up to the WADA code, but keeping its own, too, making its drugs-testing regime notionally more rigorous than any other. For two years, this appeared to satisfy the Government. Now, suddenly, it does not.

That's another aspect of the Howard Government: the lust for revenge. Against anyone who has ever crossed them. Especially against organizations whom they fund, partly or wholly.

But the AFL should never have adopted testing for drugs out of competition. What players (and anyone else) do outside of "work" is there own business. Unless you happen to favour the Calvinist fundamentalist ideology that says "Don't do this and don't do that". If this country has come down to the Orwellian level of peering into our bedrooms or bathroom cabinets (for illicit drugs) then parliamentarians should suffer the same fate.

Howard has distanced himself from this backfired election ploy, and well he should as, having set it up in the first place, he was caught out on Neil Mitchell in total ignorance. You have to wonder why he thought this foolish move would produce results. Panic? A way to get back at George Brandis for calling him a rodent years ago? At Christopher Pyne for being the only and most reluctant replacement for Santo Santoro? At Peter Costello, whom he thought would be the one to be the prime target of embarrassment?

The Government is beginning to look like trapped outlaws who are turning on each other as the posse of justice closes in.

Before you go, do read the following interview. Kathy Bowlen of Stateline interviewed first George Brandis (her questions curt, eyes steely) and then Adrian Anderson, AFL Football Operations Manager. You had to have seen it, it was that hilarious. Interviewing Anderson, it was clear the two were having a great time, Anderson nearly bursting into laughter several times. It was a long, long interview and I kept saying aloud, "please stop Kathy, or I'm gonna die laughing."

I've quoted the entire interview because Anderson deserves some kind of award for calmly informing Kathy and the audience (in so many words) that the two Government officials had just made fools of a dying government led by that desiccated coconut.

KATHY BOWLEN (to Adrian Anderson) Adrian Anderson, the Sports Minister says he hopes the AFL will change its drug testing regime. Is it?

ADRIAN ANDERSON, AFL FOOTBALL OPERATIONS MANAGER: Well, look, we've just received a submission here from the Federal Government raising a few points and we'll have a look at that and consider it. What was really pleasing was that the Government acknowledged that we are the only sport that is testing for illicit drugs out of competition. That was a really positive step.

KATHY BOWLEN: The Government says it wants to test 365 days a year. Will you do that?

ADRIAN ANDERSON: Well, look, we're the only sport at the moment that tests throughout the year for illicit drugs whenever a player is at his club. So, look, we'll have a look at what they've proposed here and we're very interested in how they go with other sports as well. They're going to talk with other sports who currently don't do any illicit drug testing out of competition. We'll have a chat to them after they've done and I think that'll be very interesting.

KATHY BOWLEN: When we spoke to the Minister he said they were more interested in chasing the AFL first and then turning to other sports.

ADRIAN ANDERSON: Yes, well, that's very interesting. As I said, about two-and-a-half years ago, we decided to do something about illicit drugs out of competition and we devised this policy to test over and above to what applies in any other sport. Look, we're happy to talk to the Government about that it was really pleasing that they were so positive and congratulated us on testing our players over and above what applies anywhere else.

KATHY BOWLEN: You say the Government congratulated you, but the Minister told us that a three strikes policy is anything but tolerance.

ADRIAN ANDERSON: As I said, the Government congratulated us as being the only sport that's doing this testing. They've raised some issues about how we do that. Look, we're very happy to have a look at that and we are certainly interested in what they're proposing for other sports who currently don't do the testing. It will be a really interesting process to go through to hear what the result of their dialogue with other sports because this is more than just an AFL issue. This is about illicit drug use which is a massive issue in society. We have been trying for two-and-a-half years to do something about it in our own way, and look, I don't think there are any simple answers but we're happy to work with the Government and to look at what they've raised here and do what we can even better.

KATHY BOWLEN: Do you think your message on drug testing has gone out clearly, or has there been a problem with the way the AFL has sold its position?

ADRIAN ANDERSON: I think there has been a problem in people actually understanding what we do, I acknowledge that, and I think slowly people are beginning to understand that we are the only sport that test for illicit drugs out of competition and that's because of a genuine desire to look after the health and welfare of our players and take the lead on illicit drug testing. 

And I think slowly people are bringing to understand that. And when other sports aren't doing anything it's very easy to criticise us for stepping forward and actually trying to do something about the issue, but we make no bones about that, we think it's important to do something, and we've exposed ourselves to a bit of criticism and misunderstanding along the way, but the message is slowly getting through.

KATHY BOWLEN: The Minister sound the as though he was waiting for the AFL to move before anything else happens.

ADRIAN ANDERSON: Look, we've received this submission here which has raised four or five points for us to consider, but what else was said by the Minister was that they would be talking to other sports who currently don't do any testing for illicit drugs out of competition. We are the only ones who do that, so it will be interesting to see I think the next step will be for them to talk to other sports and them come back to us as to what they propose as an approach across the industry, so we can all work together on this very difficult issue.

KATHY BOWLEN: Did the Federal Government threaten to withhold any fund s in order to get the AFL to talk?

ADRIAN ANDERSON: No, there was no threats or anything like that, and I mean…

KATHY BOWLEN: Suggests?

ADRIAN ANDERSON: No, no threats, suggestions. I mean, it would be very odd to do that, given that we are the only ones trying to do something about illicit drugs and actually got a program to test for them. So, no, they didn't raise that, it was a constructive meeting and look, I hope and think we will be able to make some progress down the track once they've spoken to the other sports.

KATHY BOWLEN: And can I just be clear with this, the AFL won't meet with the Government now, again, on drugs testing until the Federal Government has met other sports bodies?

ADRIAN ANDERSON: Well, they indicated to us that they would be meeting other sports who currently don't do any testing for illicit drugs out of competition. We think that's the logical next step and we're certainly happy to talk to them after they've done that.

KATHY BOWLEN: Adrian Anderson, thanks for your time.

ADRIAN ANDERSON: Thanks for having me on.

-- Hyper Roland

Posted by Hyper Roland at 2:45 PM | Comments (1)

May 25, 2007

Overlooked Items (4)

SETI finally makes contact
Courtesy Bill Leak and The Australian

Dennis Glover (The Weekend Australian, 17-18 March 2007), in an opinion piece on speech writing:

The Prime Minister's oratory illustrates the way contemporary speech tends to unashamedly appeal to our self-interest, greed and fear. It lacks an appeal to idealism.

Constant appeals to naked self-interest are fundamentally incompatible with civilised forms of government.

"We determine who comes to this country, and the circumstances in which they come" is perhaps the most devastating speech line in Australian history.

Arnold Zable, The timeless fight to speak the truth:

Persecuted writers can be found in dictatorships, left and right, in theocracies and monarchies, in countries governed by military juntas and in countries that proudly proclaim their democratic ways.

Until recently, there were no main PEN cases reported in Australia. In 2002 Melbourne PEN was alerted to the plight of Ivory Coast journalist, Cheikh Kone, an inmate in Port Hedland Detention Centre. PEN's London based research office confirmed that Kone, as he had claimed, had been persecuted for his journalist activities, and had fled the country in fear of his life. Partly due to pressure applied by International PEN, Kone was released after 32 months in Australian detention.

Australian PEN centres also campaigned for the release of Ardeshir Gholipour, an Iranian artist and activist who spent over 5 years in Woomera, Port Hedland and Baxter detention centres. Gholipour was in danger of imminent deportation when Australian PEN centres adopted his case in January 2005

Jason Koutsoukis, When words simply fail us:

A lexicon of modern political usage

• Clever: Cunning, crafty, tricky.
• Values: Associated with "traditional values" surrounding family, fidelity, with the implication that lefties that don't have any.
• Battler: Code word for "real Australian". Typically, an aspirational middle-class breadwinner who wants a bigger and better life for the kids. Their support has defined Howard's prime ministership.
• Mateship: Howard's Liberals have made a big effort to define themselves as the party that bests understands what mateship is, while the lefties are too busy drinking lattes in Fitzroy.
• Lefty: The designation for people whose taste in cars, cheese, and coffee puts them "out of touch" with "real" Australians.

Michael Leunig, Xenophobia and memorabilia:

"Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus going on before.
Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe;
Forward into battle see his banners go!"

This drab, common little hymn, this melodramatic Anglo jihad song was taught to us in the 1950s, and in Sunday school or religious instruction class we were often heard singing it.

The lyrics seemed to be more about a rampaging gang of morons than a wandering prophet who espoused radical love.

I too grew up singing this outrageous abortion of Jesus' life and message. When the absurd message finally sank in, it no doubt contributed to my fleeing anything to do with Christianity. I recently asked a Catholic friend if they had similar war hymns. "Too busy being pedophiles," was the reply.

-- Carl O'Hageman

Posted by Carl O'Hageman at 2:58 PM | Comments (2)

May 20, 2007

Political prisoner Hicks returns to Howard's Australiastan

Convicted terrorism supporter David Hicks has arrived at the Adelaide prison where he is set to spend the next seven months after touching down in his home state this morning.

Inside Yatala Labour Prison, Hicks will enter G Division, where he will strip naked, get prison clothes and be put in a two-metre by four-metre cell. It is expected to he his home until his scheduled release on December 29.

Hicks is expected to spend 23 hours a day inside his cell and will have little or no immediate contact with fellow prisoners, who include Adelaide's worst rapists, murders and Snowtown serial killers Robert Wagner and John Bunting.

Meanwhile, the creepy little rodent who, at his pleasure, kept Hicks in Guantanamo for over five years is slowly roasting on the spit of comuppance. According to Jason Koutsoukis:

If Howard loses, the political horizon facing his successor will be the bleakest in the Liberal Party's 63-year history.

One Liberal senator considered close to Costello put it this way last week when asked what would happen if the Liberals lost: "There will be no mercy, none," he said, seething at the mere thought of defeat.

"We have sat back, for years, years, and listened and watched and been humiliated. Howard says the voters are not waiting on their verandas with baseball bats ready to hit the Government, but we are. I'll come out swinging mate, don't worry." [last italics mine.]

A humiliating defeat at the election is exactly what the John Howard Party (formerly the Australian Liberal Party) deserves, nothing less. They have consistently put big business, the rich and their own lust for power over the well being of all Australians. Above all, John Howard should lose his seat of Bennelong in a landslide.

It's a pity that no one has yet compiled the list of crimes against humanity, democracy, the Westminster System and the good old fair go that have been committed by this Government in its eleven long contemptuous years in power. A simple list would do, to be published for free before the election and given away at every possible outlet or handed out on the streets of every major city and as many suburbs as is humanly possible.

The final straw must be the banishment of the name WorkChoices to Howard's hated legislation. As if he were operating in Orwell's 1984, Howard expects the mob out there to come up all perky, "Oh, well then, now that it's called The Workplace Relations System it must be as wholesome as a crate of rosy red apples at the supermarket. Let's vote JHP after all!" Howard and the electorate have form here. For at least the last two elections they've been as dumb as he's thought them to be.

The last word to Andrew Dyson, from Cornered (in today's Age). Here is a sample:

The ratings are in and it's bad news for the Howard's House team. Australian viewers far prefer the slick Fakin' it with Kevin, an undemanding farce which routinely outrates Howard's House in every demographic save the elderly rich.

This seems poor reward for the show which has, during the past decade, consistently broken new ground in local entertainment. No viewer of sound mind could forget those landmark episodes "Wacky Waterfront" and "Honey, the Kids Fell Overboard", both featuring the cheeky, chubby and sorely missed Peter Reith.

Afficionados agree that the WorkChoices episode marked the beginning of the end. In retrospect, it was unwise to hire the imported scriptwriting team of Ayn Rand and Ben Mussolini for this task.

David Hicks may have made a bad career move eight years ago, but ultimately he has hurt no one but himself. John Howard is the one who deserves to be in the dock.

-- Gort Slypesunder

Posted by Gort Slypesunder at 12:17 PM

May 18, 2007

It's politics, stupid: humanity's epitaph

Even George Bush meets the Dalai Lama when he visits Washington. But Kevin Rudd, an officious head prefect with his nose to the political wind, and John Howard, a pragmatic dry whose last vestige of conscience was devoured years ago, are not the statesmen of vision that Australia needs. They are simply poll-driven reactionaries. -- Jonathan Alley, letter to The Age.

Before even touching down in Australia, the Dalai Lama has exposed in neon lights the shallowness inherent in politics since the beginning of time. Crikey, but it's depressing.

We have a cynical and corrupt government that the majority of Australians want to be rid of. Yet, the Opposition refuses to stand tall, which is all they're asking. Why on earth did Kevin Rudd, who has met the Dalai Lama before, deem it necessary to try and wriggle out of a meeting now? Because, like John Howard, he wants to continue Australia's subservience to foreign powers: Bush's Umeruhca, Indonesia, and now China?

Whatever the pragmatic reason is, it reeks of dishonourable politics. Kevin Rudd is swiftly becoming just another "lesser of two evils". What a shame.

Last month Olney Garkle tried to distance Bilegrip from this tiresome bullshit called politics. But we all have to hang in here until the election. Until then, barring sudden death, suicide or a lottery win, there is no exit.

Rudd or no Rudd, the world desperately needs a hero, because mankind is about to lose control. (Another Howard victory will turn Australia into a nation of catatonics and the enraged.) Jesus Christ was apparently a hero. We know what happened to him for his trouble.

At present, the only known contender for this role is the Dalai Lama, himself. Forget Buddhism if the religious connotation bothers you, but his ethics and regard for all human beings are exemplary. The only reason he wasn't assassinated long ago is because his position is symbolic. He is ultimately no threat to China's hegemony over Tibet. As a result, their threats to government officials meeting him is also symbolic. Pity Kevin doesn't understand this.

Thus, the Dalai Lama is a unique case, someone who is the living embodiment of the compassionate ideal that would be commonplace in a sane world.

Is there anyone else on this planet of woe who can rise above the crushing gravity represented by the pragmatics of greed, corporate and individual? Even if there was, he or she would have even less chance than Jesus or the Dalai Lama of easing the self-inflicted pain of human misery.

Just as any given population will allow its government to commit all the atrocities it wants to as long as their hip pocket is not affected, so the worldwide sickness of each individual's inattention to the well being of all individuals will continue until the whole shebang goes belly up.

You've seen it happen over and over again. Katrina, the Tsunami, massive earthquakes all over the planet. Only then do local populations drop their petty hatreds, their defiant solipsisms, and rejoin the human race. But it doesn't last. Once the calamity recedes, the same old individual isolations re-emerge.

The terrifying conclusion is that the human race has no chance of evolving from its present potentiality to a state of realisation without being forced to by some worldwide catastrophe. And then, the odds are we'll revert to savagery. The Holocaust did not take place in a vacuum.

Who said this wasn't a planet of spiritual criminals?

-- Gort Slypesunder

Posted by Gort Slypesunder at 2:48 PM | Comments (2)

May 17, 2007

Howard and Business declare war on Labor and the people

Courtesy John Spooner and The Age

It's all out war all right. Not with guns and bombs but with 24/7 spin, obfuscating rhetoric and outright lies. Taking their cue from past successful Republican smear campaigns, Business and the John Howard Party are waging a relentless assault on Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and Labor, and by extension, the people of Australia. As we know from past experience, they will use everything in their arsenal to hammer away at the fledgling courage of the awakening electorate. The Government's experience in scare campaigns points to an eventual triumph and the return before the election to a nation of sheep. And Kevin Rudd's recent contortions are not helping.

Yesterday, we were treated to an hysterical Peter Costello foaming at the mouth as he labelled Kevin Rudd a "socialist". Likewise, Little Johnny Howard spun a whopper when he responded to queries that he would embark on a spending spree by acting as if that was exactly what Labor did, but not him:

"I'm not going to spend like Labor state governments have done, and federal Labor governments have done in the past," he said. "I'm not going to send the budget into deficit in some kind of desperate attempt to buy favour."

He's good at that, at projecting what he does onto others.

Some anti-Labor trigger words meant to scare the bejesus out of the electorate are: socialist, union, union thugs, union bosses, the past, undermine, political self-interest, living in the past, and so on. Replace socialist with capitalist, the word union with business, leave the rest the same and you have great descriptors of the John Howard Party.

The triggers meant to cosset a benumbed electorate towards keeping the Coalition are a tape loop under the pillow of sound economic management, proper costings, sound economic management, substance, sound economic management, family values, and more sound economic management.

Both sides of politics are guilty of bypassing the question to hammer the other, but JHP henchmen are the masters. Mainly because they have nothing else on their plates but retaining power and serving business; whatever is good for the country can go to hell.

Tony Eastley, of ABC radio's AM, said this morning, in the segment, Labor attacks lack of information on water plan, "The Labor Party has attacked the Government for rejecting a Freedom Of Information claim on its $10 billion water plan. The massive infrastructure project has little detail given its size. So far only 22 documents covering the project have come to light. While the Seven Network sought all the documents relating to the plan, the Environment Department has denied its request."

Michael Vincent, then asks: "So what's in a diagram called 'Water Management' that is so sensitive it can't be seen by the public? That diagram is one of just 22 documents that relate to this radical, historic and expensive plan that was announced almost four months ago."

In the following segment, Malcolm Turnbull, the Minister for Water defends the plan. Read with nauseous awe his ability to sidestep Tony Eastley's simple question and flay Labor:

TONY EASTLEY: Why all the secrecy about this giant project?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well there is no secrecy about where the project is heading. What we're endeavouring to do is deal with the biggest water crisis in rural Australia we've ever faced in our history.

We're trying to get water right, and secure for the future. And there you have the Labor party, trying to undermine this historic plan, and trying to play politics.

TONY EASTLEY: Well, is it true then that there are less documents that for an average sort of house deal here, we're talking about 22 maybe 30 documents?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: This of course is the measure of the Labor party's approach to politics. They regard the more documents, the more piles of bureaucratic paper you have, the better the policy. This $10 billion plan, which brings the Murray Darling basin under one set of one government, which brings… which puts the sort of big money, billions of dollars, into fixing our inefficient irrigation systems.

TONY EASTLEY: I think they're interested in knowing how you came about to make that decision on spending $10 billion.

MALCOLM TURNBULL: The Prime Minister has laid it all out in his speech in the National Press Club in January. There are documents released which include a detailed table, showing where all the money is going to be spent. So much for irrigation efficiencies getting water to the farm, so much on farm, so much for metering, so much for the Bureau of Meteorology, so much for structural adjustment and buy backs, all that is laid out, Tony.

The reality is that this plan is vital to the water security of Australia. John Howard's trying to fix Australia's water scarcity challenge in rural Australia, and Anthony Albanese and Kevin Rudd are trying to wreck it.

Just in order to play politics, and that is a tragedy. If you are a farmer, or living in a town on the Murray River, looking at your water supplies dwindling, you'd be shaking your head at the cynicism and the political self interest of the Labor party as they try to wreck this great national project.

TONY EASTLEY: Why do you think a diagram entitled 'Water Management' would be so sensitive that it wouldn't be available under FOI legislation?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: Tony, you're asking me to speculate. It is not the way this system works, this is not a political system.

TONY EASTLEY: But you would have seen that diagram, surely.

MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I may well have, Tony, but I have seen many documents in the course of this work and you know, this project has had input from so many different people in different ways.

It's been a… it's a vast piece of work, but you have to remember, we're living in the future, we're looking to the future. The Labor party is living in the past.

We are now in May 2007. We have been negotiating and dealing with the states in great detail ever since January. We've had meetings with Premiers, we've had many meetings with officials. The show has moved on, we're looking to the future.

Labor is grubbing around in the past trying to get a cynical political advantage, when they should be supporting a plan that will secure our water future.

And here all Tony and Labor and you and me, all we wanted to know was why the secrecy? At least Malcolm is gradually dropping that uppity intonation that made him sound like a Fifties Liberal.

Later, on The World Today, Joe Hockey hacked Labor every chance he could and did an admirable job of acrobatics over refusing to answer Alexandra Kirk's question over the dropping of the word "WorkChoices" in the latest round of taxpayer funded JHP propaganda:

ALEXANDRA KIRK: Well, Labor's polling of swinging voters is pointing to the unpopularity of your WorkChoice law. They're happy with Kevin Rudd's stance but the Prime Minister's predicting that'll change. Do you really think that more Government advertising will fix that for you when $44 million spent so far hasn't worked?

JOE HOCKEY: Well, Alexandra the Labor party and the trade union bosses are in the middle of a $100 million scare campaign against the current workplace relations system.

The same system that only today has helped to deliver increased earnings for all employees of around 4.9 per cent, the laws that are helping to deliver today a narrowing of the wages gap between men and women. And the same system that even the Melbourne Institute is saying is delivering higher dividends for people on individual agreements than people on awards or collective agreements.

Now, if you want to keep the economy strong, if you want to keep prosperity going, you cannot make up new policy with each media interview. And industrial relations is a key economic issue for the future of the country and Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard are in a mess when it comes to industrial relations.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: Don't voters think WorkChoices is unpopular? According to one coalition MP quoted in the paper this morning, WorkChoices is not a popular word; it's a damaged brand.

And is it just a coincidence that the rash of full-page newspaper ads in all the major newspapers last week advertising the new fairness test, didn't mention WorkChoices at all.

JOE HOCKEY: Well WorkChoices is the policy platform for the current system; the fairness test is a change to that platform to put in place a stronger safety net.

We will properly inform the Australian people in a very straight, non-spin way of the current system. Australians want to know where they stand in the current system. We will let them know where they stand in the current system.

And even in the face of a trade union and Labor party scare campaign on a scale we have never seen before in Australian politics, we will continue to try and properly inform the Australian people of where they stand in the current system.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: Labor polling is showing that voters know or have a high recognition of the word "WorkChoices" and then a very negative response to it. Your polling would show the same thing, wouldn't it?

JOE HOCKEY: Well, we don't engage in push polling the way the Labor party does.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: Would you re-insert the word "WorkChoices" into Government advertising?

JOE HOCKEY: Well, the amendments that we're making are not WorkChoices amendments. They are a change to the WorkChoices policy.

What Australians need to know is where they stand in the current system and that's what we're going to tell them about.

Breathtaking!

Unfortunately, Kevin Rudd seems to be doing his own acrobatics, reacting like a seesaw on eggbeater legs over everything the Government or business says. They must be enjoying making him jump and twist.

The Kevin Rudd who enjoyed "messing with John Howard's mind" has been replaced by a contortionist whose own mind is being messed with by the Master Messer. In the meantime, Julia Gillard is more or less holding the line. But unless Kevvy starts to come out fighting again, the droning voice of Miss Julia will start to irritate rather than reassure.

Kevin Rudd, this election is yours to win, but only if you stop vacillating. Act like a hero, goddammit!

-- Tommy Pendejo

Posted by Tomås El ("Pinche") Pendejo at 4:23 PM | Comments (1)

May 16, 2007

Bullies: John 'Puny Nephew' Howard knows all about 'em

Courtesy Ron Tandberg and The Age

Everyone knows schoolyard bullies grow up to be Right Wing politicians, businessmen, wife-beaters, serial killers and wacko religious fundamentalists (like the thankfully departed Jerry Falwell, who once proclaimed: God Wants War).

Is the PM so densely blinkered towards remaining in power that he truly doesn't see that coming out against bullying in schools is making everyone laugh over the bullying he condones in his party?

Letters from The Age:

It is a bit rich for John Howard to come out on bullying in schools. He didn't do much to stop Bully Boy Bill getting stuck into Michael Kirby, Barnaby Joyce and Julia Gillard. -- Peter Hall

We might take Howard's school bullying concerns seriously if he was to put the muzzle on his chief attack dogs, Bill Heffernan and Tony Abbott. Unless he sees them as a couple of non-core bullies. -- Gordon Bick

One from The Australian:

Bullies are bad news in school but seem to be admired, even protected in federal parliament. If John Howard is serious ("PM to reshape schools”, 14/5), he could start his bullies clean-up by first getting rid of Senator Bill Heffernan and then Tony Abbott. -- Tony Douglas

Bullying at its bulliest:

'Rudd risk' priced into housing costs, say builders

Business has opened a new front in its fight with Labor over industrial relations, warning that building costs will increase and thuggish behaviour will reappear if Labor abolishes the building industry watchdog.

The warning from building industry groups prompted the Federal Government to claim the average house cost would increase if Labor were elected.

The Master Builders Association said the risk to industry of such a move was real, with some builders already bumping up their prices by including a "Risk-of-Rudd" premium in contracts.

See also: Building costs to rise over Rudd election 'risk'

Talk about bullying. Various Masters of the Universe and Beyond are taking turns to bully the Labor Party into retreating from its decision to look after us proles. It was the Master Builders turn yesterday; who will step up to the crease today? Let's see, best place to look for Labor-bashing is The Australian:

Costello condemns 'socialist' Rudd

Peter Costello has launched a massive attack on Kevin Rudd's economic credibility, describing him as "an old-fashioned socialist" and accusing him of opportunistic and dishonest behaviour.

Costello went on to say: Blah blahblah blahblahblahblah. [Repeat loop ad infinitum.]

You have to begin to think that the more the Coalition rants and raves the more the polls are going to favour Kevin and Julia.

There is, however, a new development, worrying to say the least:

Rudd to snub Dalai Lama

Five years ago Kevin Rudd met the Dalai Lama and said Prime Minister John Howard and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer should do likewise, but now, as opposition leader, he is refusing to meet the Buddhist leader.

This blows Rudd's "Christian" credentials out of the water. If there is anyone on the planet who should be a hero for all Christians, it's the Buddhist Dalai Lama.

So here we have Australia's Fair Go Messiah on the brink of power and already he is playing invidious politics to please a trading partner who will remain a trading partner whether the meeting takes place or not.

Meet him, Kev! The polls are high because people think you are an honourable man.

-- Tommy Pendejo

Posted by Olney Garkle at 11:29 AM | Comments (4)

May 15, 2007

Bastard Boys v the Lords of Commerce

The law is an artificial construct erected by the capitalist class to ensure the system protects their own interests and maximises their own profit. -- Greg Combet character in ABC Television's Bastard Boys.

The patriarchal museum pieces who rule Australia are furious with this four-part miniseries, not to mention a few of the blokes on the side of us proles.

To a corporate spokesperson, they are one tiresome stuck record. In Phillip Adams' Don't lose plot over 'true' stories, Michael Duffy (Radio National's Right Wing Phillip Adams) says:

"The series is the most blatant union propaganda ... A very strange use of public money by the ABC and other government agencies ... What makes it worse is that a lot of the time is devoted to the private lives of the union characters, with many scenes of them falling in love or reading to their children so they emerge as warm, fully rounded people. In contrast, Corrigan is played as a gawky and ridiculous loner without friends, or even associates."

If you remember those heady days you also recall the very Chris Corrigan portrayed in this series. As nasty a cold piece of work as every drew breath in this country. Indeed Geoff Morrell, the actor who plays Corrigan, deserves Best Actor for his chillingly accurate performance.

The reason the only private lives portrayed are on the union side is because they are the only real people in this drama. Can you imagine the horror if the family life of John Howard and Peter Reith were shown? Or, God help us, Peter Kilfoyle? (Played superbly by Michael Robinson, in the Ray Winstone tradition.) Talk about boring (as the real Corrigan says of the series) at best or horrifying at worst. As there is a Monty Python sketch for just about everything there is also a snippet of these kinds of families at the end of "Most Awful Family in Britain" in Series Four.

As Phillip Adams says above, the unions won the battle and lost the war. And as the Combet character succinctly says at the beginning of this post, the laws are made for one reason only. That's why the odious John Howard is not only still in power but, with another election victory, will seal the fate of working people for damn near ever, or until a revolution finally takes place. And that would have to be worldwide, as populations across the globe have bought the line that Masters know better and servants should just accept their pittances.

Howard was union-busting then and he's union busting now. With his handing to business of unprecedented power with WorkChoices, they are now taking turns on a daily basis to threaten Labor over its changes to the legislation, with the subtext of trying to scare the shit out of the population.

Behind every word from these Masters of the Universe and their hired Government is an utter contempt for humanity; it's part of their collective DNA. Indeed, the word "business" could be another synonym for misanthropy.

Working day and night to destroy the credibility of the fair go for working people, they are too busy to take note of the greatest of all ironies -- that they do not now have, nor have they ever had, the slightest hint of credibility themselves.

Will Kevvy and Julia hold the line against this onslaught? Or will they cave in? The polls are consistently showing that the electorate is fed up with John Howard's trademark lies, spin and bribes. In short, his utter lack of character.

In sum, it was a brilliant series, well acted, extremely well cast, with excellent dialogue. Congratulations to all involved.

-- Tommy Pendejo

Posted by Tomås El ("Pinche") Pendejo at 2:32 PM | Comments (2)

May 11, 2007

Trainfrotting

While Olney Garkle is taking the waters at the mountain spa behind the last village on the left, now seems a good time to spring a little surprise on Bilegrip devotees who have heretofore thought of him as a responsible political blogger.

Years ago the immortal Harold Hark wrote a couple of novels in which his old friend Olney was cast as the protagonist. The books weren't all that good, but not all that bad either. They needed the kind of editor Thomas Wolfe had, the kind who would painstakingly guide HH through the necessary corrections to make it publishable.

Unfortunately, Hark's motto (established long before Homer Simpson claimed it) is: If at first you don't succeed, give up. So he gave up, but not before putting both books on the web.

Here then, is an excerpt from Chapter fourteen of Living in the O. We join Olney on a rainy winter day in Paris. He has just left a bar in Montmartre, having stepped in a puddle and soaked one of his Florsheims as he made his way back to the métro.

Trainfrotting
by Harold Hark

At Marcadet-Poissoniers, Olney decides to change trains and head south toward the Porte d'Orléans. Excluding an empty car reserved for First Class passengers, the train is packed. Squishing his sopping-socked foot in a ruined Florsheim, Olney looks around in disbelief. He is squeezed in among every sort of Parisian, each of them arm to belly to hip. Some hold magazines and newspapers aloft, reading intently. Most stare into space; not an easy task, since nearly all eye-level horizons contain someone else's eyes.

After the first stop much maneuvering takes place in anticipation of the Gare du Nord. There, dozens get off as dozens get on, more even, and among them . . . Lloyd Have Mercy . . . the Goddess of the Collective Dream. Heat-seeking missiles pop their silos all around her as Olney, jabbering sotto voce to his own Peacekeeper, exclaims, It's She Who Must Be Laid, said Sidewinder replying, Dimwit. You think I don't know?

Indeed it is the very She whom the painterly hands of the masters have long sought to frame; the Matrix Madonna to whom clergymen, alone in hands-on cloisters, have ever offered their secret and spunk-stricken prayers; the Princess Perfect from whom Mr. Preterite (and the Mrs. too) has eternally implored carnal redemption.

Train under way, positions change, she is jostled to a hand pole near gibbering, whimpering Olney. Brazenly contravening the miserable conclusion to a cold and rainy January afternoon, she is wearing a little red dress made of . . . Oh, my God, it's silk. A small jacket, unbuttoned as it is meant to be, is hopeless at keeping her warm. In no way does it cover her breasts, which, Olney craning to see, appear to be exciting themselves against the silk. In the moving crush of people her cleavage is pressed to the hand pole and now, with Olney only inches away, it is certain her breasts are exciting themselves, nipples in pert particular.

Taking the curve towards the Gare de l'Est, there is a further shifting of place as passengers are squeezed out of position and others vaulted forward. Accommodating Olney rolls with it and Thank you, Lloyd! finds himself pressed against her port flank. He swallows several times, trying to prevent the increased saliva from overflowing his lower lip like a cum shot. Two other men, having also thrown themselves to the shifting swells of fate, now cover her stern and starboard. The top of her head comes just under the chins of her bodyguards, who are now so close they could kiss. The man on Olney's right is moving against her buttocks; he nearly buries his face in her hair. For all their closeness, the six eyes never meet, yet on tacit and trembling cue take turns nuzzling her fragrance. With an effort she wriggles her body this way and that in order to glance at each in turn, caressing, in the process, each gulping neck with her hair. Olney reads a fiery surrender in her eyes. He notices too, a slight esophoria, each eye pointing with its own code to the creamy source of that surrendering fire. The asymmetry buckles his knees.

"She's the Goddess, all right. Say, did you know," lecturing here to who else but Countdown Cock, "that only true Madonnas suffer eye deviations?"

"You bet," sez Cock.

"And that the Mayan culture fawned over cross-eyed women to the extent that mothers hung little wax balls in front of their infant daughters' noses so the girls grew used to focusing on them?"

"Absofuckinlutely," affirms Cock. Olney wants so very badly to hang his little balls in front of her nose, or just below her chin, to be oh, so exact.

For the next five stops the quartetto lubricato are locked together. Olney can barely restrain himself from caressing those bonbons de Babylon; they are just where his hands would be if he held on to the beaming, steaming hand pole. He is falling in love, wants to whisper arias of ardency into her ear, is, in fact, about to when another thought strokes his She-mad mind: Maybe I'm a psychopath!

"Who cares?" throbs Cock, "this is pure heaven, don't be a fool, she's not complaining, heave to."

"Yes sir!" salutes Olney, the two of them joint bodyguards with the stiffest security force in Paris.

The shuttling rhythm of the train pushes Olney firmly against her, then pulls him slightly away. Touch and release and bump and brush finally give way to a moment of gut-rippling ecstasy as he comes like an incunabula in its prime, the dragon-lunged sperm shooting down his pantleg to ruin another Florsheim.

"Hose that Florsheim!" chants Cock, bubbling over with joy.

"Let my 'gasms go!" adds Olney, reaching for the champagne. Glasses filled, its all together now (to the Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies theme song):

We're just a coupla guys
With one big drooling eye
And when it sees a lov-e-ly thigh
It has to have its wye

So leave us have our fun
We're gonna get our gun
Forget your law and order
Til we come upon her buns

Glasses fly midst raillery on the stage of glory. The Cock and its Olney embrace and guffaw and stomp around and chomp huge mouthfuls of roast fowl.

Just a-hosin' down the megaplasm! hip-hips the one.

"And look, Great Mother, no violence!" hoorays the other. Glasses filled once again, robust voices burst forth anew, this time to a Twenties riff:

Too bad, taboos
Go take a cruise
We're gonna do the things
That we used to do....

Way back when feeling good
Meant really feeling good
Before the world said no
And nobody could

We're gonna spurt and squirt
Against this pert little skirt
So fuck off you twerps
And all you righteous jerks

They fall over each other in drunken depletion, grasping at chairs, tables, pillars, and finally the hand pole, the one gobsmacked, the other . . . hey, I'm poppin' the silo again!

The train keeps pushing him against her hip: another spasm of sperm rockets to Florsheim earth. Olney is almost delirious. Did Our Lady of the Métro feel the volcanoes erupting on all sides? If so, did she . . . like it? Olney is wax-faced and waxing: "May the glory of her consenting heat be writ in all genetic codes of future time. May her experiences flourish and multiply. May the fires in her body forever be tended. O Goddess Frottee, O Goodness Me! And look, Great Mother, no guilt."

At Les Halles she joins hundreds of disembarking passengers. Is she meeting a girlfriend and will she tell? "These men pressed against me . . . " The very sound of her imagined voice pumps yet another dollop of fetch to his shoe. "So where have I been all my life, only now popping my cherry? With all kinds of sexually transmissible diseases about to answer the reactionary's prayer and isolate everyone, could this be the sex of the future?"

Olney's accomplices melted into the fleshwork as the train sped on. He had no idea what they looked like. Now, in the post-ejacular event, he was more concerned about his pants. Fortunately he'd worn his dark gray corduroys; the stain was hardly noticeable. Discreetly, he wiped his shoe with a few leaves of Miss Helen paper hankies. He changed trains at Odéon and by the time he emerged again, at Charles Michels, the telltale streak had completely disappeared. Olney still quivered. The tour of Montmartre had been a bust, but progress in the Cinema of Life was certainly forthcoming: A hard day's shooting well spent.

The full chapter may be found here.

-- Benoît Balz

Posted by Benoît Balz at 3:29 PM | Comments (1)

May 10, 2007

Bring on the Singularity

Sanity is for chumps. -- Guru Higbigiggy

Last July, I wrote It's too broke to fix. I continue to believe that the mess this world is in cannot be repaired. The evangelic imbecile, George W. Bush, will go next year, Australia's pragmatic imbecile, John W. Howard, may or may not go this year, but France, of all countries, just elected "an American neo-con with a French passport," the arriviste, Nicolas W. Sarkozy. In other words, mankind is not yet fed up with dog eat dog.

There is no solution because the present mess is based on centuries of greed, apathy and small-mindedness. We are simply getting what we deserve, because we are a species suffering dual identities: our religions teach us tolerance and compassion; real life teaches us to be fearful and greedy.

A species whose survival and wellbeing is based entirely on the exchange of goods or monies, and consequently the hoarding of these, is either doomed to extinction or further evolution.

I've never been enthused about the blinkered bourgeois view that this reality -- the one where we are born only to toil in the service of others and then die -- is the only one. I prefer the sometimes wacky worldview of assorted visionaries who would rather see a fairy at the bottom of the garden than settle for the obscenity represented by a world leader sitting in a fabulously expensive fauteuil with his legs crossed like a debutant in a room of other politicians doing ditto as they discuss the fate of their subjects based on how much they can get out of them.

But the force of this "reality" is overwhelming. No matter how much we want to escape it, its tentacles reach out to suck us back in. We have to continue in our meaningless job to pay the mortgage or the rent, to send the kids to high-fee schools, to buy the toys that link us to the world as owned an operated by America. How can we think outside this planet-size square if we are constantly bombarded by the holy exhortation to consume, to watch the next episode of the latest clever series of between commercials filler?

Some of those wacky folk out there think this cycle of dumbed down humanity is coming to an end.

The Christian fundamentalists interpret the coming years as the end times, the destruction of the world, where the believers can finally be swept into the arms of The Patriarch in the Sky. Unfortunately, their anticipation for this future salvation has caused them to turn their brains off in the present. They have traded their humanity for the ideological equivalent of the Easter Bunny.

Others regard the conclusion of this cycle as the end of history, in the sense that the human species will be transformed so completely that bodies may no longer be required.

Well, now…

Beginning with Australopithecus ramidus through homos habilis, erectus and sapiens neandertalensis, we, the current crop, known as homo sapiens sapiens, cannot justifiably think of ourselves as the crowning glory.

There are some who believe Neanderthals are still among us, chiefly as politicians, military leaders and business people. But if not, we homo sap saps have to take the blame for the larval state of our evolution.

If the present historical era is coming to an end, let's hope it won't be through the Armageddon prophesied and longed for by increasingly popular Dick and Jane religions. We don't know what will happen, but it sure is tantalising.

One of the postulations for the end of history is based on the acceleration of innovation, from the beginning of recorded history to now. In 2000, Terence McKenna wrote:

Technology, population, speed of travel, food and materials production, communications capabilities, computing power, the decrease in computer size, [the] amount of information known to humanity, and a gamut of other things, are all increasing at an accelerating rate. That is, they are increasing, and the rate at which they are increasing is increasing.

Some mathematicians plotted the asymptotic graphs of all of humanity's technological developments and projected them out to the point where they all, relatively simultaneously, hit infinity. The day that they arrived at is December 21st, 2012, one projected date of "The Singularity." That's the day that some say is when everything as we know it will...change. Drastically.

Now I realize that this is a mathematical model, and that things never seem to happen on time, but as a good thumbnail reference point, it makes a convenient time to aim for. There are other models, other calculations, and other dates. The idea is more important than the specific date, IMO.

[An interesting aside: I've heard that the ancient Mayan calendar was calculated forward but ends on...you guessed it: Dec. 21st, 2012. I've also heard that the scientists aren't quite sure why that is... :-)]

Essentially, if we take a look at some of the really species-changing events in our history, we see three really MAJOR developments that changed the entire course of human history. 1) The Agricultural Revolution. 2) The Industrial Revolution. 3) The Information Revolution.

30,000 years ago, we learned how to farm. 350 years ago, we learned how to mass-produce machines. About 50 years ago, we learned how to build computers. As you can see, the rate of change is increasing, as is the ability afforded by the change. With computers, we have the ability to build more efficient things, fly planes and spaceships, educate more people, etc. Each of these enabling technologies will build further development, and at a faster rate.

According to the mathematical model, we should see approximately *61* more of these species-changing developments before December 21st, 2012! All of the same magnitude as the three noted above! Again, it's only a model, but they predict 18 of those changes on the last day, and 13 of those to happen in the last FRACTION OF A SECOND, as things accelerate towards that infinity point.

How about that, singularity fans! What, you don't believe it? That's good, because beliefs and belief systems are the great causes of the chaotic, dead-end world we live in. As the late Robert Anton Wilson said, "convictions cause convicts". Our great minds relegated to containers of dogmatic stasis.

But say, haven't you noticed throughout your life how things appear to be speeding up? Maybe they really are!

Terence McKenna again,

As we approach the lip of this cascade into concrescence, novelty, and completion, time seems to speed up and boundaries begin to dissolve. The more boundaries that dissolve, the closer to the concrescence we are. When we finally reach it, there will be no boundaries, only eternity as we become all space and time, alive and dead, here and there, before and after. Because this singularity can simultaneously co-exist in states that are contradictory, it is something which transcends rational apprehension. But it gives the universe meaning, because all processes can be seen to be seeking and moving in an effort to approximate, connect with, and append to this transcendental object at the end of time. [some italics mine]

I don't know about you, but the idea of homo sap sap evolving out of the material world into the spiritual (and that excludes religion, which has rarely been spiritual) sounds a lot more fascinating than what we've been stuck with for eons: first you're born, then your naughty bits have a go, then you become a slave, then you die. And sooner rather than later everyone forgets you even existed.

Years ago Sting and The Police recorded Spirits in the material world. Those with imagination will be looking forward to the breakthrough. Those without will keep on voting for the sad old same old.

There is no political solution
To our troubled evolution
Have no faith in constitution
There is no bloody revolution

We are spirits in the material world

Our so-called leaders speak
With words they try to jail you
The subjugate the meek
But it's the rhetoric of failure

We are spirits in the material world

Where does the answer lie?
Living from day to day
If it's something we can't buy
There must be another way

We are spirits in the material world

-- Gort Slypesunder

Links
Terence McKenna Land
On novelty

Posted by Gort Slypesunder at 4:07 PM | Comments (1)

May 9, 2007

Obeisance to the guru

What, you expected something on the budget? -- BB

You all know where the sex organs are, but has it occurred to you that every inch of a woman, her entire body, is itself a sex organ? It no doubt has. From her fragrant hair to the soles of her feet the body of woman is a topography of mind-loosening emanations demanding exploration to the point of exhaustion, if not madness. What a pity then that most of us men have paid it scant attention in our haste to plunge down that hideaway scissure to ambrosial epiphany.

Women who love women have not made that mistake.

I suppose for hetero women and our queer brethren a man's body is equally beautiful. But, aside from the agreeable idea of irrumating a hard cock (belonging to a young androgynous male, bien sûr), it is beyond me how anyone can kiss a mouth surrounded by stubble or deal in any way with hairy chests, hairy armpits and hairy extremities, not to mention big thick bones. The bodies of men may be appealing to some, but, I ask you, where is the glory?

The glory is woman.

But let's be clear about one thing: while the attributes of women are endless, here I am only dealing with their sexual attractiveness. For the connoisseur not every woman qualifies, although she probably did at one time or other. The sexual beauty of a woman's body can be compared to the life of a grand cru wine. At first it is too young, as yet undefined. Then, while drinkable, it has yet to reach its potential and is best left to age. When a fine wine reaches maturity, it will remain ripe for the drinking for many years. After that it tends to become flabby and, finally, undrinkable.

Does this sound sexist? Only to those for whom sex is meant to be little more than the act of procreation, especially to those for whom it is an irritating diversion to profit-making. But the enjoyment of sex is, or should be, an art form. It should be an end in itself, which, when completed, becomes just another aspect of the whole person, whose capacities on this planet of lowered expectations are, in reality, unlimited.

Pornography will always be with us and occasionally it suffices. But the truth is, regarding pictures of women is to reduce them to sex objects, not to mention turning the mulierose scoptophiliac into a slavering isolate. No, I'm afraid that nothing short of hands-on consensual lovemaking in its almost infinite diversity is the route to holy sanity.

Having said that, there are certain paraphilias where consent may not be given explicitly, but may also not be exactly withheld. On these trembling occasions there must be a tacit, unspoken understanding, a sort of physical telepathy. If the connection is made, an explosive level of illicit desire is inevitable.

Please bear in mind that while I am talking about the sexual attributes of the female body, these cannot be separated from the inner woman (for wont of a better term). I'm not sure what you call it, but some women, whether beautiful, cute, plain or ugly, are more arousing than others, and that has to come from somewhere deep inside. Her spirit? Her soul? Her quick? Whatever it is, when I encounter a woman who has it, I'm like a helpless satellite to her every movement for as long as our paths converge.

I don't care much for the larval idea of intelligent design, but if there is a God, She gets an A+ for Her erotic design.

-- Benoît Balz

Posted by Benoît Balz at 3:38 PM | Comments (4)

May 7, 2007

Sarkozy: Le Pen-lite, the Neo-con American friend

Anglo commentators take the French to task for their 8 per cent unemployment rate. It's because the French enjoy excellent health, education, transport, and other services, unemployment support and retirement benefits, extensive state child care and "maternal" schooling from age three, not to mention five weeks of holiday and a 35-hour week. How dare they have it so good! Doesn't everyone know that, after 50 years of economic growth, we can no longer afford such measures? The French need to trade their holidays in, cut their bloated public services and privatise. -- Charles Sowerwine, La difference is a stark one. [italics mine.]

According to Meg Bortin in the International Herald Tribune, French voters gave Nicholas Sarkozy a healthy 54 per cent of the vote for "economic reasons". Yeah, sure. They don't want to admit it, but the darkly underlying reason is immigration. The French may have recoiled from the brain-dead militant intolerance of Jean-Marie Le Pen, but fear of the fruits of colonialism -- the influx of North Africans over several decades -- remains a constant nightmare. Enter Nicholas Sarkozy, or Le Pen-lite, with his promise of economic valhalla and that reassuring subtext that he will deal decisively with Racaille, read Muslim "scum".

Do the French really want to trade their well-developed, extremely civilised society for a bloodless Thatcherite dependence on weird concepts like growth (at all costs) and debt reduction (for ideological reasons)? Do they really want to put themselves at the mercy of the free market, read the politics of big money? Let's hope so, because if the real reason was to get rid of illegal immigrants then they will wake up one day in a country very unlike the one they are used to: a nation of constant upheaval iced by a privatised economy that, while letting infrastructure go to hell, overwhelmingly favours the rich over the poor.

Such is the siren call of racial hatred that it turns otherwise decent people into snarling fools, ready to gobble up the lies of agents working for high rolling profiteers.

For Australians there is a glaring similarity: Pauline Hanson was to John Howard as Jean-Marie Le Pen is to Nicholas Sarkozy. Sarkozy would agree with Howard's sinister warning: "We will decide who comes to this country, and the circumstances in which they come."

Other similarities between Howard and Sarkozy: both are favoured by retired people, traditionally the most frightened demographic. And let's not forget Howard's (and soon Sarkozy's) battlers, the aspirationals ready to cut anyone's throat as they ascend that old ladder of opportunity.

The French are not unused to racism. They lost their minds under Pétain. Now they get the chance again. Too bad there is ultimately no place in capitalism for liberté, égalité, fraternité.

-- Tara R. Bümdier

Posted by Tara R. Bümdier at 1:47 PM

May 6, 2007

John Howard: not even a real emperor with no clothes

When Howard boasts about his experience, what he really means is that he's played the game of politics longer than anyone else.

He's like an old conjurer with a bigger bag of tricks to wriggle out of more sticky situations than anyone else. That may yet prove to be the winning advantage, but Howard's jibe about Rudd's inexperience should be seen for what it is: just another canard to distract the voters. -- Jason Koutsoukis, A master's stroke.

A few weeks ago letter writers were accusing Koutsoukis of being a right wing plant at The Age, including myself. Read this opinion piece and you will see nothing could be further from the truth.

Koutsoukis compares the "experience" of Howard and Rudd. And what a chasm there is between the two. The fact is, Howard has no experience in anything but cunning politics. He didn't leave his mother's house until he got married, in his thirties. Koutsoukis:

When you look at Howard's background, the only meaningful experiences in his life have been in and around the federal parliamentary Liberal Party and its NSW division.

In no other aspect of life does this emperor with no clothes have one iota of experience. A hollow, unscrupulous trader in political skulduggery, Howard's career has been an embarrassment:

When Howard left the treasury in March 1983, the budget deficit was forecast at $9.6 billion, inflation was 11 per cent, unemployment was 10.2 per cent, the economy was in recession with negative 0.4 per cent growth, and housing interest rates were 13 per cent.

And, despite the 1982-83 recession being the worst since the Great Depression, Howard still managed to increase the federal tax take from 25.1 per cent of GDP in 1977 to 27.5 per cent of GDP by 1982-83.

Howard then spent 13 years in opposition, during which - when he wasn't leader himself - he spent a lot of time conspiring against the three leaders he served under: Andrew Peacock, John Hewson and Alexander Downer.

What's so admirable about all that?

Koutsoukis also gives a blow-by-blow description of the shallow experience of Peter Costello.

...Costello keeps bragging about is his stewardship of the Australian economy, declaring that Rudd has no place putting his hand up to run what is now a $1 trillion show.

What was Costello's economic experience before he entered Parliament? Zero. Formal economic training? Zilch. Ever run a business? No. Has a department full of economic gurus behind him, all at his beck and call? Yes.

This has hardly been the forging of an Australian lion.

In terms of the kind of experience required to lead a country, Kevin Rudd has it all over Howard.

He left home at 18 to study international relations at the Australian National University (Howard lived at home until he got married), where he spent four years mastering Chinese language and culture; not a bad investment, given China's increasingly vital importance to Australia's future.

From 1981 to 1988, Rudd served as a career diplomat, with postings to Stockholm and Beijing.

At age 31, Rudd joined a political party for the first time and became Wayne Goss' chief-of-staff when Goss was Queensland opposition leader and later premier. Rudd then served as head of the Queensland state public service for a number of years.

There was also a stint with global finance giant KPMG before he entered Federal Parliament in 1998 as a pretty well-rounded sort of a fellow.

What, in Rudd's past, suggests he's not up to the job of being prime minister?

The Federal John Howard Party is bad enough but here is a Victorian Liberal MP, Ken Smith, joining the chorus of misogynist old fogeys, this one complaining about Julia Gillard's hairdo.

Julia Gillard and Ken Smith

"Has the new hairstyle, a bit of a rinse, and a set of pearls helped the red-headed Labor industrial relations motormouth understand what it is all about?" Liberal MP for Bass Ken Smith said in Parliament.

"She needs more than a new hairstyle and pearls. She needs to get out in the real world and talk to employers who love WorkChoices and not just to her union mates." [italics mine]

Notice anything missing in that line about "employers who love WorkChoices and not just to her union mates"? That's right, the workers. Crux of the matter, eh? Howard has given employers more power than they've had since the industrial revolution was a pup. So much power that the existence of workers is only an irritating afterthought, if that.

We need to be very clear about the meaning of this election. Australia either has the possibility of an egalitarian future with Rudd or the tragic caricature of a fully-fledged feudal state under Howard.

Tomás El ("Pinche") Pendejo

Posted by Tomås El ("Pinche") Pendejo at 11:19 AM | Comments (3)

May 5, 2007

Go Ségolène … Go away Olmert

From the dark heart of an Australia in the grips of the Right Wing, where for eleven long years we have been led by the Sarkozy-like conservative, John Howard, we urge the French people not to make our mistake. For Sarkozy will turn France into what Australia has endured under Howard: a Thatcherite nation of haves and have nots, where the wealthy "individual" is pumped full of aspirational rhetoric and the poor are left to rot.

Like Howard, Sarkozy has form in divisive, racist politics. Jean Moulin did not sacrifice his life for France to turn into an updated battleground between the state and the nouveau disenfranchised, whom Sarkozy has called "scum".

One of the many things foreigners admire about France is their refusal to take injustice lying down. If only here in Australia we had had the courage to take to the streets over the 1001 injustices perpetrated by the Howard Government, we could have salvaged some of our pride.

Surely French people know that with Sarkozy, they (or their children) will be taking to the streets over and over again. And not only that, the riots of the past few years will increase. Sarkozy has promised to "liquidate the heritage of May 1968." This is nothing less than code for Pétain-style laws preventing the democratic right to protest. Why would anyone vote for that?

Ségolène Royal is the voice of sanity in this election. Do not throw away your conscience for Sarkozy's American-style, Thatcherite ideology of dog eat dog.

Allez Ségolène!

• • •

Israel's "Yosemite Sam" Olmert is standing by his atrocities in Lebanon last year and refusing to resign, even though the vast majority of Israelis are demanding it. And why should he? As a prominent member of the Right Wing Elite who rule the world, he can count on his colleagues to continue to support him. Has George W. Bush resigned? John Howard? Tony Blair? Like Olmert they are responsible for the deaths of thousands upon thousands under their insane leadership.

At least Blair has a residue of integrity. He is stepping aside at the end of the month. History will treat him far more generously than Bush, Howard, Olmert and Sarkozy, if the latter wins tomorrow's election.

What a pathetic indictment of the human race that we have allowed such maleficent cretins to destroy the peace we all long for.

Allez-vous en Olmert!

-- Tara R. Bümdier

Posted by Tara R. Bümdier at 11:16 AM | Comments (2)

May 3, 2007

Sack Heffernan? The Hobgoblin wouldn't think of it

That's our John Howard: the hobgoblin who sits on your shoulder and whispers nasty things about other people. Like the hideous and intimidating beasts residing atop cathedrals, Howard inspires fear and intolerance in the electorate. And Bill Heffernan is his gunsel. Whenever a member of the opposition needs to be insulted or his or her character slandered, the Hobgoblin sends out his Big Bad Stand-over man to do the whacking.

Listen to Heffernan's apology to Julia Gillard for calling her unfit to govern because she has chosen to be deliberately barren (starts roughly 2:42 minutes in) and note the tone of voice in his last line, "So, there you go." It speaks volumes of cold-bludded thuggery:

Real Media | Windows Media

We all noticed the shift in the Hobgoblin's reaction as the day progressed. At first he thought the Gunsel could get away with it. Kevin Rudd stepped in to remind Australians of the duo's utter lack of character:

…when first quizzed on the comments yesterday, Mr Howard refused to say whether Senator Heffernan should apologise to Ms Gillard. Later in the day Mr Howard was much more strident. "I don't approve of those sort of remarks and I've made that very clear," Mr Howard said in Tasmania.

Today, Mr Rudd said the change in attitude marked Mr Howard poorly. "I think the challenge lies with Mr Howard to do the right thing here," Mr Rudd told ABC Radio. "Mr Howard has the habit, in the past, of when these comments are made by various people on his frontbench or his backbench, just to say: 'Well, that's them, they've got their right to express their point of view, don't let it come crashing across my shores'.

"But I noticed yesterday, when he was first put this proposition about Bill Heffernan, there wasn't much action then. "It was only when people across the country reacted with one voice and said: 'This is unacceptable'.

"I actually see this as much more of a referendum on Mr Howard's character and how he handles these sorts of questions."

The Code of Ethical Turpitude under which the Howard Government operates only allows for ministers to be sacked if in doing so the Coalition can wedge Labor. Witness the risible sacrifice of the hapless Ian Campbell because he shared a glass of mineral water with Brian Burke. Campbell was executed in the transparent attempt to make Kevin Rudd look really awful.

But never, ever would the Minister for Misogyny, Bill Heffernan, be sacked. After all, he represents the lowest ideals of the party that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing, the party that wouldn't know democracy from a bucket of shit, the party of Masters and its electorate of Servants.

Nothing less than an almost total rout of the John Howard Party at the election can hope to undo the damage done to Australia's reputation as a democracy. I say, "almost total rout" because there are still a handful of genuine Liberals languishing on the backbenches.

-- Tommy Pendejo

Posted by Tomås El ("Pinche") Pendejo at 1:59 PM | Comments (3)

May 2, 2007

John Howard supporters: the ignorant and the avaricious

Copyright © 2007, Maurie Gee

"Piss off you black lover. The darkees will outbreed us you idiat. John Howard knows this mate. You think you are so cleva. You dumb prick. Imagine having millions of lazy blacks like the abos floatin' around. Then you can play daddy to 'em all. White Australia any day!" -- Hitler rocks (email address supplied). This comment was sent in response to a Bilegrip posting in March, Selfishness and racism are Howard's only hope.

"Julia Gillard is unfit to lead the country because she is deliberately barren." -- Senator Bill Heffernan, interviewed by The Bulletin magazine.

Standing side by side with these morons are Australia's business leaders, who are throwing everything at Labor over Industrial Relations. And no wonder. Thanks to John Howard, for the first time since the halcyon days of the 19th century's Industrial Revolution, the lords of business have got workers legally by the throat. And they do not intend to let go. Labor's intention to trash AWA's is in direct conflict with the business mentality of treating workers as they wish. Business is screaming that Kevin Rudd is in the pocket of the Unions, yet Little Johnny Howard lives in the nether end of the alimentary canal of business.

As Paul Keating said in an interview by Eleanor Hall on The World Today:

PAUL KEATING: Look, Eleanor. The right to collectively organise pay and conditions of work is a basic civil right, it's the thing that cuts out the template on a democratic nation.

When you say to people, you can't get together at work, you can't organise your conditions, you're back to the earlier part of the industrial revolution, and that's where Howard belongs.

What is at the core of John Howard's AWA policy? I'll tell you what it is - to stop two people or more talking about their conditions at work, to give you the sort of take it or leave it AWA. You know, in you come, and you sign up.

ELEANOR HALL: You've already said the Labor party at the moment is not selling its policy very well. What do you make of Julia Gillard's comments, telling business not to get into the political debate on IR? The Prime Minister says its bullyboy tactics. It was hardly sensible politics, was it?

PAUL KEATING: Bullyboy tactics. This is a guy who saw his government involved in the criminal breaking… the criminal breach of the Crimes Act on the industrial waterfront in Sydney in 1997-98.

This is the same Prime Minister who is now grinding 20-year-old kids … and women in retail back from sort of 12 bucks an hour to nine bucks an hour.

Be that as it may, guess what? Business will convince workers that they know what is best for them. In the end, the slow crawl back to the legendary "fair go" being offered by Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard will be crushed by John Howard Party budget bribes and a snow job via an advertising blizzard by business.

Most workers know WorkChoices will eventually return them to the status of servants at the mercy of masters. Yet, there is every likelihood that they will be persuaded to retain the status quo. This is the greatest indictment against democracy. Not that it cannot work, but that without the full participation of citizens it will continue to be run by what amounts to a legalised Mafia, that is, business, big and small.

It does seems incredible that people would vote against their own best interests, even though they always have. Why is this? Why do the masses refuse to take responsibility for their long-term wellbeing? Why do they continually offer themselves up as fodder for largely unscrupulous bosses?

The answer must be that they simply want to be told what to do. If they could think for themselves or put themselves in the shoes of others, they would never vote for a John Howard. In the end, there are those who tell people what to do, and the rest just want to be told. Cuthroats and cowards in an eternally sinister symbiosis.

-- Tomás El ("Pinche") Pendejo

Posted by Tomås El ("Pinche") Pendejo at 3:10 PM | Comments (3)